Josh Heupel recalls tricky rebuilding process, continuing player development in 2023

The Tennessee football program is coming off an 11-win season that had the program in the thick of the College Football Playoff conversation, and the Volunteers are looking for more after navigating a tricky rebuilding process expertly.

It’s been a quick rebuild under coach Josh Heupel, who explained how he pulled it off on the Paul Finebaum Show on Thursday.

“Certainly when we got here there was so much going on outside of our program, and a lot of things that you couldn’t control,” Heupel said. “Control what you can. Make sure that you focus and harness all your energy from your staff to your players, put it where it’s going to have the most impact. Don’t waste energy on things that don’t matter.”

Tennessee’s hiring process itself coming off the Jeremy Pruitt era was a mess, with Heupel not officially tabbed until late in the coaching carousel cycle.

That added an extra degree of difficulty to the early days of a tricky rebuilding process.

“You look at the timing when I got hired, late January, so much uncertainly surrounding the program, the two months leading up to it,” Heupel said. “Thirty-five plus players entered the portal. At that time you could only bring in an annual count of 25 guys. We went into Year 1 with 65 scholarship players. Most guys were at 90, 95 because of COVID seniors that year.

“There were a lot of things that we had to navigate in a really short amount of time.”

Heupel did what he could to compartmentalize things and attack one thing at a time as he began the tricky rebuilding process.

He was thrilled with how things began to unfold as he got settled, crediting his players with making the process significantly easier for all involved.

“Most of all just stabilize the program, create relationships with our guys. They bought in really quickly,” Heupel said. “That ’21 and ’22 group of seniors, what they did, the fact that they wanted to stay, they wanted to play for the Power T, they cared about their teammates, they will be revered and remembered in a completely different way than those that came before them. They truly set the cornerstones of the foundation of where this program has been in two years and where we’re going.”

From there, it’s just about further development of his players as the tricky rebuilding process gives way to sustaining success.

Tennessee has proven it can compete with the best of the best in college football, knocking off Alabama last season en route to the Orange Bowl. Now the next step is about continuing the development and building out the depth chart to be able to sustain things throughout the year.

“At the end of the day we’re about developing the person and developing the player,” Heupel said. “How do we get them to be their best as a person outside of the game and then how do we get them to perform at their best when we get to kickoff? Everything we do is built around that. Our players understand the reason why, they buy into it and we’ve become accountable and connected to one another.”